The present invention relates to a grasping device specially designed for dispensing articles which have little self integrity, such as filters.
Tweezers with frictional caps on the working ends of the movable legs are known for facilitating the grapsing of objects. U.S. Pat. No. 2,362,395. It is further known that the top filter in a stack of flat filters may be dispensed by using a device having four movable needles which operatively move toward four stationary guards in order to dispense the top filter from a stack of filters. U.S. Pat. No. 2,541,144.
Automatic drip coffee makers generally require the use of dish-shaped filters which are disposed after each use. Such filters are generally sold in nested stacks of, for example, 15 or more filters. In such a stack, the filters are very difficult to separate manually not only because the sides of the dish-shaped filters are fluted, but also because of the thiness and lack of self-integrity of the filter paper and the proximity of adjacent filters. Generally, the tendency of consumers is to separate the dish-shaped nested filters at their edges which is difficult because of the nature of the stack of filters.